At the start of her employment, Defendant signed a "Work Product Agreement" that stated that all work created or developed by Defendant "shall be the sole and exclusive property of CYC, in whatever state of development or completion," and that it "will be prepared as 'work-for-hire' within the meaning of the Copyright Act of 1976." This agreement also required the Defendant to return all confidential information upon request and stated that "actual or threatened breach of [the agreement] will cause [Plaintiff] [[irreparable injury[[ and damage." All accounts at issue were created during Defendant's employment, and Defendant was also provided with a laptop computer for use in the performance of her job duties.

Upon Defendant's termination, Plaintiff requested the return of the laptop and the login and account information described above. In addition to refusing to return this material, Defendant began displayingcontent she had created during her employment alongside other projects she was involved with on her personal websites as part of her design portfolio.

While the Defendant argued that the sites in question had not been updated recently, the court pointed out that such updates were her responsibility and refused to allow that to form a basis for her to oppose the motion for an injunction. As a result, the court granted Plaintiff’s motion with respect to the return of the onlineaccount information. The court did find Defendant’s argument that the material on the laptop computer had been synced with desktop computers in the Plaintiff’s possession to be much more convincing. Taking that argument as true, the court was unable to find sufficient likelihood of irreparable harm to order the return of the computer.

Finally, with respect to Plaintiff’s material posted on Defendant’s websites, the court noted that irreparable harm may not be presumed in matters of copyright and trademark infringement.[2] As a result, and because of the credible innocent arguments in Defendant’s favor for using the material in her portfolio, as well as the unlikely event that potential customers would be confused by Defendant’s portfolio, Plaintiff’s motion with respect to the Defendant’s websites was denied.